Frequently, there is a desire to chop fruit, vegetables, cheeses, breads, meats and other foodstuffs into cubes or dice. For small quantities, an appropriate knife may be used. The foodstuff is first sliced in one direction. Then the slices are themselves sliced in a second direction, perpendicular thereto, providing chips. Finally, the chips are cut into cubes. The slices and chips may be further sliced or cut individually. For speed and convenient, the sliced foodstuff is turned through ninety degrees to form a stack of slices that is then sliced through in two mutually perpendicular directions.
Knives make one cut at a time, and manually dicing is time consuming, labor intensive and risks cutting fingers, particularly where occasional cooks attempt to dice foodstuffs. Additionally any technique that relies on making one cut at a time, relying on the eye of the knife wielder to ensure that the foodstuff is cut into equal lengths, will invariable result in uneven lengths. With one dimensional objects, this is not necessarily too bad, but where the foodstuff is to be diced into cubes, miscalculation of length leads to an unaesthetic result.
There have been several attempts to mechanize the slicing, chipping and dicing processes. For example, the egg slicer has a concave receptacle for receiving an egg, and an array of wires that can be drawn down at once, thereby slicing the egg into slices. Since the wires are equally spaced, the egg is sliced into slices of the same thickness, and the egg slicer is valuable when making large quantities of egg sandwiches. Although wires can be used for cutting cheese as well, an array of wires is really only useful for slicing eggs, soft cheeses, bananas and other foodstuffs of similar low resistance. It cannot be used on firmer vegetables, such as potatoes, and cannot be used on soft-fruit or vegetables, such as tomatoes, for example.
A grid of criss-crossing knife blades has been used as the cutting means of potato chipping devices, where the potato is forced through the grid and is cut into chips thereby. Such a device is useful for chipping.
Although a further guillotine blade could be added in front of the grid, at a fixed distance therefrom, to cut the extruded chips into cubes, such a guillotine blade would only make one cut at a time, and would be inherently dangerous. Furthermore, the extrusion through grid of blades is good for materials that can be forced through without suffering damage in consequence, such as potatoes, for example. Such a device would not be suitable for fresh summer fruits or for making an Israeli style, tomato and cucumber salad for example.
At the same time, there are also numerous electric vegetable slicers or food processors for household use or designed for use in industry. These are multi-purpose machines and are generally-sophisticated appliances which, apart from their high cost, often have the disadvantage of being inconvenient to use and also difficult to assemble and clean.
United Kingdom Patent No. GB 2 032 260 to Leung Chi Shih describes a vegetable slicer comprising a holder, a table on which the holder may be slid back and forth, a horizontal knife blade at a distance above the table, such that sliding the holder back and forth causes vegetables and other foods within the holder to be sliced by the knife blade. A series of upright knives can be caused to protrude above the table top, which together with the horizontal blade, cuts the food into chips.
German Patent Number DE3642704A1 to Haushaltsprodukte Vertriebsges describes a food cube cutting appliance—having a cutting board and food holder with engaging guide grooves or rails.
The device described serves for cutting foodstuffs into pieces, preferably for dicing onions. It is composed of a cutting board having a plurality of vertical knives which are arranged on the cutting board and project upwards from the grating surface of the latter, and of a horizontal knife which is arranged at a predetermined distance above and parallel to the grating surface of the cutting board. On the longitudinal sides of the cutting board there are provided guiding grooves, into which engage the guiding webs of a holding device, which contains a cylindrical supporting body which is open on its underside and a cylindrical insert which is arranged inside the said supporting body, accommodates the foodstuff and can be rotated with respect to the supporting body. The said insert has toes which are arranged at regular intervals around its circumference on its underside and engage in baffles which are provided on the grating surface, so that the rotatable insert is rotated through a predetermined number of degrees. The food is slid back and forth tangentially with respect to the horizontal cutting blade. By rotating the food, the orientation of the food with the plurality of vertical cutting blades is varied. Since the food to be cut impacts the horizontal cutting blade head on, even where the blade is sharp, such a system, though no doubt ideal for cubing onions, the intended purpose thereof, is unable to slice ripe tomatoes without squashing them.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,732,622 to Vincent Jacques, titled “Safety manual vegetable cutter” relates to a manual vegetable cutter for selectively varied cutting, that comprises a frame fitted with at least one cutting blade mounted transversely facing a slot through which the cut vegetables pass and also two side rails providing guidance in to and fro translational motion for a guide chamber equipped with a loading volume for the vegetables to be cut up and acting in conjunction with a press-down cap which the user grips in order to move the guide chamber to and fro along the guide rails while constantly exerting pressure on the vegetables contained in the loading volume so that they are pressed against the cutting blade or blades fitted to the frame and can be cut up by the blade or blades. This device appears to slice, but not to dice foodstuffs.
PCT Application Number WO 2005/097434 to Klotzz and Scramm describes a device for comminuting foodstuffs. As shown in FIGS. 8 and 9 thereof, the blade thereof is a V shaped cutting blade. This type of blade slices both sides of a tomato or the like that is forced thereagainst, with the blade being held at a sharp angle to the side of the tomato. Usefully, the blade can be lowered to the height of, or below the height of the slit, thereby protecting it between use and also keeping it effectively sheathed and away from fingers.
United Kingdom Patent Number 264,427 to Herzmann describes yet another machine for cutting fruit or vegetables into cubes, strips or slices.
German Patent Number DE 3500959 describes a vegetable cutter with an adjustable cutting thickness that has an elongate basic body, having a handle at one end, and a slide path which is formed by a pushing-on surface, a blade and a pushing-off surface. The pushing-on surface is clamped to the basic body on one side in the region of the handle and is adjustable in its inclination by means of a displaceable wedge device. As a result, an adjustable gap is produced between the free end of the pushing-on surface and the blade. The wedge device is formed by a slide which is displaceable below the pushing-on surface towards the free end thereof and engages on a wedge surface (wedge rib) which acts in the longitudinal direction between the pushing-on surface and the slide. The device described does not appear to be able to chip or cube vegetables, merely to slice them.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,441,254 to Borner describes a kitchen utensil for cutting foodstuffs such as vegetables or fruit into strips and particularly to a blade member therefor, the blade member comprising a strip of material such as metal which is integral with a plurality of spaced substantially vertical cutting blades which project from the plane of the strip, the strip being embedded in a guide plate, over which the foodstuff is moved during cutting, so that the blade member is securely held, the vertical blades projecting above the guide plate. The strip has cuts in one longitudinal edge and the metal between the cuts is bent up to form the vertical blades. The blade member described by Borner is one directional and allows cutting by pushing or pulling, but not by both.
Despite the many tools and techniques described in the prior art and commercially available, there is a need for a foodstuff dicer that can cut soft fruit and vegetables into cubes, the blades thereof cutting in both directions and the opposite faces of the cube being perfectly parallel. The present invention addresses this need.